Happened to me at a party gig in the early 70's. Walked off stage, grabbed a brownie from the end of the food table and halfway through the second set I was feeling no pain. Everything was....groovy. Wild thing.

@Quayle - Ain't it the truth brother. Everytime you turn around you're breaking some law you had no idea even existed. We got busted for fishing off the beach with no license. Who ever heard of such a thing? For generations you could fish off the beach but I guess the State needed revenue to feed the beast of bureaucracy. It's the little freedoms they take away that get ya'...

Would you get arrested for putting tobacco or caffeine in brownies, too?

Perhaps. There are laws about tampering with food. Would it be any different had they put cocain or heroin in the brownies? It's one thing to make pot laced brownies for yourself and your friends to knowingly consume. It's quite a different thing to give pot-laced brownies to someone without their knowledge.

Would you get arrested for putting tobacco or caffeine in brownies, too?

Or ExLax? Back when I was in school, rumor was that a girl brought in brownies for the faculty room. The faculty was kept running and the girl got into trouble. But it wasn't a felony, for crying out loud. Does everything have to be illegal?

"At approximately 10:20 a.m. on Friday, police responded to the Hellems Arts and Sciences Building on campus after a professor became dizzy. Paramedics took the professor who was going in and out of consciousness to a local hospital to be treated."

-- Also, this looks like it wasn't just innocent marijuana brownies. They screwed up their prank, got people seriously ill and could have killed someone if they passed out at a bad time. Prosecution seems fair here.

With ExLax: It matters on the consequences. If it is just people had uncomfortable stomachs all day, probably nothing serious would happen. If someone had a serious medical reaction though? Then I think you'd have seen t be a felony. A lot of prosecution is based on actual results; if the folks had just gotten a little high off a brownie, they'd probably have just gotten told off by the school. People were collapsing; that's serious.

Poisoning people through fraud -is- a felony. If they had told the people the drugs were in there, it would not have been. What I'm also, by the way, guessing we'll find out eventually is that marijuana wasn't the only thing in the brownies, since, unless these people gorged themselves, I don't think there's enough marijuana in a single brownie to cause those things, so we'll find there was something else in there.

"Things like this are why, in many elementary schools, students cannot bring food to class unless it's commercially prepared and wrapped."

No, that's to satisfy the suffocating nanny instincts of the school administrators, and the self-interested paranoia of their lawyers. The equivalent of banning Halloween because of mythical razors in the apples.

No, that's to satisfy the suffocating nanny instincts of the school administrators, and the self-interested paranoia of their lawyers. The equivalent of banning Halloween because of mythical razors in the apples.

Also, the calories. Schools seem to be putting the kids on starvation diets due to so many being overweight, and that is partially because they no longer have recess and sports.

Who read the actual consequences of the prank, including people having to be taken to the emergency room?

I read the article, Matthew, and I agree that the brownies had larger consequences than a good laugh. I still don't think something like that should be a felony unless they can prove that the miscreant bakers meant to make people sick and end up in the hospital. A felony could mean prison time, and a felony record would definitely mean difficulty finding employment or a place to live. It also means they lose the right to vote or to own guns. All that for a prank gone bad? I don't think so.

Calling this a prank is a ridiculous minimization of their action. A prank is a phone call. This effected someone's mind for a time. Suppose one of the students had killed someone trying to drive home unable to recognize their drugged status?

Back in the day (in the Peoples Republic of Madison in the late 1970's) the sister of a friend of mine offered me brownies. Which I ate. Which contained hashish, and which made me wretch. Didn't get high, just violently ill. Splitting headache, blew chow.

It matters: Withholding the fact there are peanuts in the brownie is pretty irresponsible, given peanut allergies are a well-known thing. However, there is no -clear intent- by putting peanuts into a brownie to cause harm to others. Putting marijuana in the brownies shows that their goal was to get people to eat it without their knowledge and get them high; it went badly, people got very, very sick, and were sent to the emergency room (taking up time, space, money and effort that could have been better used.) A felony might be too harsh, but there should be some consequences.

I'm just gonna repeat what I said first: I never eat anything from someone else without asking what's in it.

What kind of bonehead professor eats food -- a brownie!! -- brought in by a student? (I suppose the type of bonehead professor who dreams up a bring food to class day). ANY kid of college age offers me a brownie, and I am immediately suspicious of what's been baked into it. I can't be the only person who thinks this way, can I?

I agree with Prairie Wind. Felony? Seems a little harsh for a juvenile prank.

It wasn't a juvenile prank. They purposely gave people, without their knowledge, a substance that made people sick, or uncomfortable or was morally repugnant to some.

I remember the LSD, "pranks" where unsuspecting people were dosed with LSD and it was NOT a pretty sight. Ha ha ha....really funny. Watch this gal or guy freak out thinking that they are going crazy. Ha ha ha...watch what funny things they do....ha ha ha.

Some people had long lasting mental effects from being 'surprised'.

They deserve to be severely punished, not necessarily because it was pot, but for surreptitiously feeding people things that could potentially harm them. If you want to indulge yourself...feel free. If you want to announce to everyone what is in the brownies or punch, then let them make the choice.

If you are a surprised subject who is then going to take a drug test for a job or for insurance purposes, you are not going to be amused.

MadisonMan said... I can't be the only person who thinks this way, can I?

It would never occur to me that someone would do this in a class setting, at a party maybe. Although I did notice in the booking photo the guy is wearing reefer shirt. Maybe if he came in reeking every day and then showed up with brownies I'd make the connection. But giving someone drug against their will should be a crime. It's dangerous in addition to being a usurpation of their freedom. And people who choose not to be involved in drug culture shouldn't have that choice held against them legally.

You're asking the wrong question relating to the severity of the issue though. The question should not be whether anyone else thinks like you, but whether all or most people would do. It doesn't seem so.

Unassuming? What? Are these people who write this stuff even literate?

No. They are not literate. They also have no knowledge of history or science. The journalism profession is proof of the failure of our educational system to actually "educate". The egregious errors in our local paper are just embarrassing. The journalists in the bigger publications are just as bad.

I suspect this originated as a typically dull lefty "teachable moment" in the wake of the Great Pot Legalization Victory in CO.Haha, like wouldn't it be so cool to get everyone high in class.I suspect that not one thought given to the rights of other people not to be used as guinea pigs for overbearing underthinking brats and their need to instruct.

I doubt the kids meant any harm. They probably figured that, since marijuana is legal in Colorado, that it would OK to cook with it (like you cook with wine, for example). Maybe, unbeknownst to them, the marijuana they cooked into the brownies was laced with something else. That might account for the ER visits.

If they have a clean record up till now, rather than saddle them with a felony conviction, I would sentence them to pay reparations to those they wronged plus a heavy dose of community service.

This is Colorado, where you can Pat Sullivan a kid's brown eye and walk in 30 days.

"Even more shocking was Dougherty's statements that after his arrest, Sullivan was asked whether he had ever had sex with a minor. But he could not tell them yes or no because he was under the influence of meth during those encounters.

"He may very well have had sex with underage individuals," Dougherty told the court.

Investigators also found images on Sullivan's computer that were "suspicious" with regard to whether they depicted minors. In the end, they couldn't be "classified" as minors, Dougherty said."

Read more: Former Arapahoe County Sheriff Patrick Sullivan pleads guilty in meth-for-sex case - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/recommended/ci_20320732#ixzz2EnDfqhCr Read The Denver Post's Terms of Use of its content: http://www.denverpost.com/termsofuse